Global Domination

Tuesday, December 5

Unexpected Me Time

I found myself with some time of my own that I wasn't expecting to have last night. I arrived home to find that my girlfriend was out and not due back for a while. What could I do with all this spare time? Would I do some cleaning or washing? Perhaps I would sort through the mini mountain of paperwork on my desk? Or maybe I would do some writing? Read a book? I wish that I could say that I'd taken it upon myself to go for a walk and be healthy. Sadly I did none of these things, for I am weak, and faced with an easy option, I'll take it. I lay on the bed and watched a Dvd.

It was The Fast Show. It was their farewell tour, a show I went to see live. I don't think I remembered a great deal of it. I had watched the Dvd of their previous tour recently and could remember the handful of common bits of material. I enjoyed it, though. I like the Fast Show. It comes from a good set of comic minds and the character acting is superb too. This Dvd had interspersed behind the scenes shots with the show, so some of the magic of seeing it unfold with surprises is lost, and you wonder whether they needed to show you people getting into character before the went on. However, it was illuminating. Once the quick change was done, the performer might do a quick in character mannerism to camera, and the character was turned on. I think that's probably what you have to do anyway when you're playing multiple characters in the same show. Find a trigger. Something which epitomises the character, and do it to get going.

Following my girlfriend's return I went on to watch The Day After Tomorrow, which was as big as Independence Day, only more shit. Then there was Kiss The Girls, a movie which hooked me in, but was still a pile of rats' droppings. So, a lot of watching was done.

To be honest, I needed the down time. Work has been getting much more interesting of late, which is excellent, but comes with the normal aspects of writing computer software. Sometimes you have to wrestle with things for what could be forever, until the apparent chaos of what's going wrong suddenly clicks into focus and you can point to something fairly minor and start fixing it.

After a day hitting my head against the wall yesterday, I needed a break. It took a half day more of pondering and musing for the answer to hit me today. Get another job. One that's easier. But, the other answer also hit me, which was to change the stupid thing I noticed into something sensible. Within a few minutes everything was working and I haven't had to resort to the job seeking.

In other news, I have a gig this week which I've only decided to do because it looks weird. To make it more weird, I may choose to do it without my guitar, thus making it a proper open spot performance on my part. Or it could be the start of a greater degree of freedom for me. I don't know. Anyway, the good news is that I will know some of the other acts, so if it all gets weird, we can do group therapy.